Unsung Heroes: The decade-long mission bringing migrant children into education fold in Bengaluru tech hub

At their Bhoganahalli resource centre alone, 40 children are currently enrolled in a bridge programme. By the 2026-27 academic year, at least 20 of them will transition into formal government schools.

Through a combination of initiatives, including state government involvement, the Gubbachi Learning Community has since 2015 enrolled 1,960 children of migrants in education, with several entering the government school system to complete Class 10 through the National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS) mode and even pursuing university or vocational pathways.

The Gubbachi Learning Community initiative involves working closely with migrant families and the education system. Along with persuading migrant families that their children should be in school the initiative has revived declining admissions in as many as nine government schools in southeast Bengaluru and added high-quality English programmes.

Over 10 years, Gubbachi’s mission of enhancing quality of teaching in Grades 1-2-3 in the Government schools’ Nali Kali programme and supporting the system with plugging teacher shortages, has made these classrooms joyful and well functioning resulting in increased enrollments, say the founders of the initiative.

Starting at 120 in 2015 at Kodathi this GHPS has shown a healthy enrollment growth of over 480 students.

“Education is our entry point, but working with families is our main impact,” says Somya Nand, co-founder and operations lead. Nand emphasises that the initiative recognised early on that the potential for change lies within families and communities.

“On one side of the road, you see the Microsofts, Intel, and just behind them, they are living in these metal shanties with no drainage, but they are smiling, and they are happy,” says Rizwan Ahmed, another co-founder who looks after the community, school and government interface of the initiative.

“We call them non-citizens because they have no voter IDs, so there is no political party or person committed to their betterment. The basic amenities are not there. Now they are kind of “organised shanty spaces” because after the pandemic, the subcontractors are anticipating a lot of migration and are building rooms in anticipation,” says Nand.

The ‘English’ factor

A major breakthrough in persuading migrant families from Bihar, Assam, and West Bengal to keep their children in school has been the introduction of high-quality English programmes.

“English is considered the language of emancipation,” explains Nand. “While Kannada remains the first language, the aspiration for English is what secures the family’s commitment.”

Approximately 400 children are involved in the initiative at Kodathi. Of these, about 200 are in the 10+ age group participating in the pure English intervention programme, while the remaining children are part of the government school intervention, according to the founders of Gubbachi.

“At the same time, there has also been a realisation at the (education) department level that English is the language of emancipation and the aspiration of families. All government schools in Karnataka have become bilingual. This happened about two months ago, and this is a window of opportunity to bring more migrant children into the fold of the system,” says Rizwan.

Karnataka Education Minister Madhu Bangarappa recently announced that bilingual (Kannada-English) streams have been introduced in over 9,500 government schools as of 2025.

How Gubbachi educates Bengaluru’s migrant children

Gubbachi launched its first bridge centre in 2015 in Kodathi to work on learning losses and prepare migrant children to be classroom ready.

The Karnataka Education Department provided two rooms at the Kodathi Government Higher Primary School for conducting bridge classes for these children.

One classroom was designated for preschoolers, where an early childhood care and education programme was held, while the second classroom was used for older siblings to facilitate bridge learning. In 2016, 25 children from the inaugural bridge programme enrolled at Kodathi Government Primary School.

Since Gubbachi’s launch in 2015, enrolment at the school has skyrocketed from a mere 70 students to 481 in 2026. This growth prompted an upgrade to a high school in 2025. Since 2021, as many as 25 “bridged” students have cleared their Class 10 exams via NIOS.

To address the diverse needs of migrant families, Gubbachi operates four distinct programmes: Bridge learning (age 6–16), which is tailored for school dropouts to bring them back into the fold and toward a Class 10 certificate; preschool preparations (ages 3–6) for younger siblings ahead of formal schooling; government school support (class 4–8), which deploys trained Gubbachi teachers to public classrooms to improve learning quality; and Gubbachi transform (class 1–3), which is a multi grade, multi level programme designed to help children catch up on foundational literacy and numeracy.

Beyond the work inside classrooms, the initiative operates a community learning centre in Bellandur and resource centres in colonies like Bhoganahalli to provide foundational support at the community’s doorstep.

Migrant families were often reluctant to send older children to school because they were needed to babysit younger siblings (Express photo).

Breaking myth of ‘floating’ families

One of the most significant hurdles was convincing government schools to open their doors to migrant children. Local schools, already seeing a decline in numbers as local families opted for private English-medium options, were initially sceptical.

“The government schools were diffident about long term engagement with education of migrant children. They assumed the children would just ‘go away’ after a few months,” says Nand. “We had to demonstrate, month after month, that if education and livelihoods are stable, these families stay. Many have lived here for 15 years; they are not going anywhere.”

Another realisation was the “childcare barrier”. Families were often reluctant to send older children to school because they were needed to babysit younger siblings while parents worked. By setting up preschool programmes alongside bridge classes, Gubbachi freed the older children to study.

“Working with families is the backbone,” says Rizwan Ahmed. “It started with a simple question: ‘Why is the child absent?’; and that opened a Pandora’s box of socio-economic challenges we had to address.”

The Covid turning point

While Gubbachi began in 2015 with just two borrowed rooms in the Kodathi school, the true scale of the migrant population only became clear during the 2020-21 pandemic.

“We ventured into properties we had never seen before to distribute relief,” Rizwan recalls. “We were shocked. We found 600 families living in the middle of the IT Hub with no visibility: people from Assam, West Bengal, Odisha, and Jharkhand hidden in the heart of the city.”

“Earlier, we were working only on a need basis. We were mostly a school- and child-based intervention, with families in the communities where the children are located. We assumed that there would be 200 families needing help at lockdown time in March, but in the end, we catered to over 50,000 families by the end of June,” says Nand.

Success stories

The impact is best measured by the families who have broken the cycle of poverty.

A family from Bihar, where the father is a painter and the mother a road side eatery operator, saw their eldest child clear Class 10 via NIOS in 2021 and subsequently complete 12th grade through NIOS in 2024, enrolled in Azim Premji University for Information Sciences after having worked for a couple of years. The second sibling is now pursuing a Diploma in Mechatronics at NTTF (Nettur Technical Training Foundation), while the younger sisters are also in school.

One student, Zeenat, was forced to leave Bengaluru during the pandemic when she was in Grade 6. When the family returned, her parents were hesitant to re-enrol her. Through persistent counselling and a scholarship to augment the family’s income, Gubbachi put her on a “fast-track” curriculum to ensure she finishes her Class 10 certification. She is currently pursuing a three years Diploma in Tools Engineering and Digital Manufacturing at NTTF. Gubbachi fully supports her education.

New challenges

Despite these wins, the community is concerned about the Karnataka government’s decision to discontinue the Nali Kali programme, a Montessori-style Multi Grade Multi Level methodology for Grades 1–3, starting next academic year.

“Nali Kali was an excellent programme for a migrant child because even if the children do not come to school for 10 days, they can start from where they left off. But in a normal class, this is difficult, and the teacher has gone ahead by two chapters, and the child has to catch up on his own or through remedial work,” says Rizwan.

New programmes introduced by the Gubbachi initiative in government schools in southeast Bengaluru include sports, dance programs, and field trips for children.

“We began by focusing on government schools because education is a responsibility of the system. Both health and education are public goods, and it is the state’s duty to provide them. We acknowledge that the system has its limitations,” says Nand.

“We can do only as much work as the funding that we receive. The need is huge. Within this geography, there are almost 1,000 out-of-school children. We do not have the funds to respond to that size of the problem,” she says.

“But we are constantly striving and trying to get funds for it. There are around 17 CSR partners that we work with.”